Can you secure your supply chain from factory to consumer?

INDUSTRY VIEW

4 October 2018

Alastair Taylor, Vice President / European Sales at Systech & Yoshiyuki Mizuguchi, General Manager at Toppan

Product counterfeiting and diversion has become industrialised on a global scale, endangering consumer safety and undermining economies and brands. The global cost of counterfeiting and diversion is projected to reach $2.8trillion by 2022, as it infiltrates leading industries including pharmaceutical, health and beauty, and alcoholic beverages.

This exposes manufacturers, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, to risk as diverted products prevent essential medicines from reaching patients. Plus, the efficacy of diverted drugs could be reduced from improper handling, robbing people of their expected remedy – often with dire consequences.

There are currently technologies in use that track and trace products across the supply chain – from RFID tags to holograms to specialised printer inks. However, these are additive, costly solutions that can be defeated by bad actors, as they do nothing to authenticate, detect, or prevent counterfeits or diversion.

Previously there was no real end-to-end deterrence until the introduction of a new technology called UniSecure®. UniSecure, developed by Systech International, is a cloud-based, comprehensive, mobile authentication solution that reduces counterfeiting and diversion. Covert, non-duplicable, and secure, it’s easy for supply-chain partners to validate, and affordable to implement and scale because it uses existing packaging.

UniSecure analyses the random, microscopic variations in every product barcode, QR code, or other printed code using a digital camera. This creates a unique digital signature, or e-Fingerprint®, that enables product authentication from the item level to the palette level, and track-and-trace capability using a mobile phone application.